St. Dunstan, then, who was a Sussex man....having taken orders, which was his own look out, and no business of ours, very rapidly rose from sub-deacon to deacon, and from deacon to priest, and from priest to bishop, and would very certainly have risen to be pope in due time, had he not wisely preferred to live in this dear country of his instead of wasting himself on foreigners.

 

Of the many things he did I have no time to tell you.... but one chief thing he did, memorable beyond all others.....  was his pulling of the Devil by the nose.

 

For you must know that the Devil, desiring to do some hurt to the people of Sussex, went about asking first one man, then another, who had the right to choice in it, and every one told him St. Dunstan.

 

 

Now as the story of the way St. Dunstan pulled the Devil by the nose, has, in the long process of a thousand years, grown corrupt, distorted, and very unworthily changed from its true original, and as it is a matter which every child should know and every grown man remember for the glory of religion and to the honour of this ancient land, I will set it down here before I forget it, and you shall read it or no, precisely as you choose.

 

For he was their protector, as they knew, and that was why they sent the Devil to him, knowing very well that he would get the better of the Fiend, whom the men of Sussex properly defy and harass from that day to this.

 

So the Devil went up into the Weald of a May morning when everything was pleasant to the eye and to the ear, and he found St. Dunstan sitting in Cuckfield at a table in the open air, and writing verse in Latin, which he very well knew how to do.

 

Then said the Devil to St. Dunstan: "I have come to give you your choice how Sussex shall be destroyed, for you must know that I have the power and the patent to do this thing, and there is no gainsaying me, only it is granted to your people to know the way by which they should perish.

 

And indeed this is the Devil's way, always to pretend that he is the master, though he very well knows in his black heart that he is nothing of the kind.

Now St. Dunstan was not the fool he looked, in spite of his round face, and round tonsure, and round eyes, and he would have his sport with the Devil before he had done with him, so he answered civilly enough: -

 

"Why, Devil, I think if we must all pass, it would be pleasanter to die by way of sea'-water than any other, for out of the sea came our land and so into the sea should it go again. Only I doubt your power to do it, for we are defended against the sea by these great hills called the Downs, which will take a woundy lot of cutting through. "

 

"Pooh! Bah!" said the Devil, rudely, in answer."You do not know your man'. I will cut through those little things in a night and not feel it, seeing I am the father of contractors and the original master of overseers and undertakers of great works: it is child's-play to me. It is a flea-bite, a summer night's business between sunset and dawn."

 

"Why, then," said St. Dunstan, "Here is the sun nearly set over Black Down, westward of us, so go to your work; but if you have not done it by the time the cock crows over the Weald, you shall depart in God's name."

 

Then theDevil, full of joy at having cheated St. Dunstan, as he thought, and at being thus able to ruin our land, which,if ever he could accomplish it, would involve the total destruction and effacement of the whole world, flew off through the air southwards, flapping his great wings. So that all the people of the Weald thought it was an aeroplane, of which instrument they are delighted observers; and many came out to watch him as he flew, and some were ready to tell others what kind of aeroplane he was, and such like falsehoods.

 

But no sooner was it dark than the Devil, getting a great spade, sent him from his farm, set to work very manfully and strongly, digging up the Downs from the seaward side. The sod flew and the great lumps of chalk he shovelled out left and right, so that it was a sight to see; and these falling all over the place, from the strong throwing of his spade, tumbled some of them upon Mount Caburn, and some of them upon Rackham Hill, and some here and some there, but most of them upon Cissbury, and that is how these great mounds grew up, of which the learned talk so glibly, although they know nothing of the matter whatsoever.

 

The Devil dug and the Devil heaved until it struck midnight in Shoreham Church, and one o'clock and two o'clock and three o'clock again. As he dug his great dyke drove deeper and deeper into the Downs, so that it was very near coming out of the Wealden side, and there were not more than two dozen spits to dig before the sea would come through and drown us all.

 

But St. Dunstan....by the power of prayer caused at that instant all the cocks that are in the Weald between the Western and the Eastern Rother, and from Ashdown right away to Harting Hill, and from Bodiam to Shillinglee, to wake up suddenly in defence of the good Christian people, and to haul those silly red-topped heads of theirs from under their left wings, and very broadly to crow altogether in chorus, so that such a noise was never heard before, nor will be heard thence afterwards forever; and you would have thought it was a Christmas night instead of the turn of a May morning.

 

TheDevil, then, hearing this terrible great challenge of crowing from some million throats for seventy miles one way and twenty miles the other, stopped his digging in bewilderment, and striking his spade into the ground he hopped up on to the crest of the hill and looked in wonderment up the sky and down the sky over all the stars, wondering how it could be so near day. But in this foolish action he lost the time he needed. For even as he discovered what a cheat had been played upon him, over away beyond Hawkhurst Ridge day dawned - and with a great howl the Devil was aware that his wager was lost.

 

But he was firm on his right (for he loves strict dealing in oppression) and he flew away over the air this way and that, to find St. Dunstan, whom he came upon at last, not at Cuckfield, but in Mayfield. Though how the Holy Man got there in so short a time I cannot tell. It is a mystery worthy of a great saint.

 

Anyhow, when the Devil got to Mayfield he asked where St. Dunstan was, and they told him he was saying Mass. So the Devil had to wait, pawing and chawing and whisking his tail, until St. Dunstan would come out, which he did very leisurely and smiling and asked the Devil how the devil he did, and why it was he had not finished that task of his. But the Devil, cutting him short, said: "I will have no monkishness, but my due."

 

"Why, how is that?" asked St. Dunstan in a pleased surprise. Then the Devil told him....how it was a burning shame that such a trick should have been played, and how he verily believed there had been sharp practice in the matter, but how, notwithstanding, he would have his rights, for the law was on his side. Then St. Dunstan, scratching his chin with the forefinger of his left hand (which he was the better able to do, because he had not shaved that morning), said to the Devil in answer :

 

"I perceive that there is here matter for argument. But do not let us debate it here. Come rather into my little workshop in the palace yonder, where I keep all my arguments, and there I will listen to you as your case deserves."

 

So they went together towards a little workshop. St. Dunstan, blithely as befits a holy man, but the Devil very grumpily and sourly. There St. Dunstan gave the Devil a chair, and bade him talk away and present his case, while he himself would pass the time away at little tricks of smithying and ornamentry, which were his delight. So saying, St. Dunstan blew the bellows and heated the fire of his forge and put his enamelling tongs therein, and listened while the Devil put before him his case, with arguments so cogent, Precedents so numerous, statutes so clear, and order so lucid, as never yet were heard in any court, and would have made a lawyer dance for joy. All the while St. Dunstan kept nodding gravely and saying:

 

"Yes! Yes! Proceed!... .But I have an argument against all of this!" Until at last the Devil, stung by so simple a reply repeated, said: "Why, then, let us see your argument'. For there is no argument or plea known or possible which can defeat my claim, or make me abandon it or compromise it in ever little." But just as he said this St. Dunstan, pulling his tongs all hot from the forge fire, cried very suddenly and loudly:

 

"Here is my argument! " With that he clapped the pincers sharply upon the Devil's nose, so that he danced and howled and began to curse in a very abominable fashion.

 

"Come, now!" said St. Dunstan. "Comel This yowling is no pleading, but blank ribaldry'. Will you not admit this argument of mine, and so withdraw from this Court nonsuited?" As he said this he pulled the Devil briskly round and round the room, making him hop over tables and leap over chairs like a mountebank, and cursing the while with no set order of demurrer, replevin, quo warranto, nisi prius, habeas corpus, and the rest, but in good round German, which is his native speech, and all the while St. Dunstan said:

 

"Argue, brother. Argue, learnedcounsel, Plead'. All this is not to the issue before the Court'. Let it be yes or no'. We must have particulars'." As he thus harangued the Devil in legal fashion, he still pulled him merrily round and round the room, taking full sport of him, until, at last, the Devil could stand no more, and so, when St. Dunstan unclappered his clippers, flew instantly away.

 

That is why the Devil does to this day feel so extraordinarily tender upon the subject of his nose; and in proof of the whole story (if proof were needed of a matter which is in the Bollandists, and amply admitted of the Curia, the Propaganda, and whatever else you will), in proof of the whole story, I say you have:-

 

Imprimis the Dyke itself which is still called the Devil's Dyke, and which still stands there very neatly dug, almost to the crossing of the hills. Secundo, et valdefortior, in Mayfield, for anyone to handle and to see, the very tongs wherewith the thing was done.'

 

(Hilaire Belloc - The Four Men)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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